


Folie à Deux

by anon7912



Category: The Boyz (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Angst, Blood and Gore, Eventual Romance, M/M, Organized Crime, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:40:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26372857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anon7912/pseuds/anon7912
Summary: “Do you want me to fear you?” Hyunjae asks at length.The boy beside him smirks lazily, one side of his mouth tugging upwards while the other slumbers. “Un petit peu, chaton,”in perfect French.(A little bit, kitten.)
Relationships: Choi Chanhee | New/Kim Sunwoo, Lee Jaehyun | Hyunjae/Lee Juyeon
Comments: 32
Kudos: 112





	Folie à Deux

**Author's Note:**

> To my dearest friend/angsty brat, Oni -
> 
> Happy (early) birthday! I'm glad that TBZ's comeback is happening during Virgo season because you deserve it. Thank you for making me laugh, for translating Twitter/young people lingo for me and for being the loveliest friend - I'm so grateful for your existence. Welcome to the big 2-0 you hag!
> 
> I realise you've already read this chapter before so it's kind of a shit birthday gift for now, but there is more I promise haha. Love you lots Onners!
> 
> ~~  
> 
> 
> Hello all! Welcome to my new multi-chap fic that has been sucking up my very soul. Please read the trigger warnings below very carefully before proceeding - I know that some of you are probably minors so I am asking you to consider very seriously if this is the right fic for you. This work is much darker than anything I've ever written, including Nightingale, so please do not think that they will be similar. 
> 
> ***TRIGGER WARNINGS PLEASE READ***
> 
> *There is a lot of violence, death and blood involved (NO bloodplay though). Juyeon is a serial killer with sadistic tendencies, and Hyunjae is a paid assassin. 
> 
> *These two characters are very bad people. If you are young and impressionable, please do not read this.
> 
> *Their relationship is not healthy. It should not be misconstrued as an ideal or romantic. There will be sex, and everything is consensual between them, but the line between love and obsession here is very, very thin and as such, this fic should NOT be something to aspire to. 
> 
> If you are too young to fully grasp the above, please do not read this fic. The tags will be updated with each chapter, and each chapter will also have an updated list of trigger warnings.
> 
> With all of that out of the way, I hope you enjoy!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Amusingly (maybe only to me), the title of this fic is a misnomer. Folie à deux, also known as shared delusional disorder (SDD), refers to the psychiatric phenomenon where two individuals with a relationship share the same delusions, which is not the case in Juyeon and Hyunjae's relationship. 
> 
> I picked the title because I liked the literal translation of the phrase, which is "madness for two" - I like the way it captures both their madness for each other and their violent madness generally.

Hyunjae distinctly remembers the day he meets Juyeon. 

He’s on a job - when is he not? - and the sticky, Singaporean air makes the hair at the base of his neck curl in the most irritating way. This isn’t one of his prettiest jobs, not one of the ones involving expensive suits and even more expensive pay cheques at the end. This is ugly — a job commissioned by someone who scrounged up every last penny and signed his life away at the helm of Chanhee’s Italian-leather clad feet. As Hyunjae walks through the crowded streets, deeper and deeper into the hidden divots of an otherwise glittering city, he feels the stench of humanity’s ugliest coat his skin like viscous oil.

For all that it is crude, thankfully, the affair is a simple one. Single target, gunshot to the head. No mangled body dropped at someone’s doorstep as petty revenge, no photographs to be taken for the client to pore over with relish for years to come. Hyunjae landed in Singapore the night before, and he anticipates being gone the day after.

Perhaps this is why he remembers every detail of the day he meets Juyeon so clearly, then. Perhaps he recalls every last particularity precisely because everything was meant to go smoothly, every last anomaly accounted for. 

And yet, it seems he did not account for one. 

When Hyunjae emerges into the tight alleyway where he has learned his target frequently steps into for smoke breaks, he’s filled with the distinctly unpleasant sensation of _surprise,_ because instead of his target taking the first inhale of his daily 9:35 PM cigarette, someone else is standing there.

Someone who is not the short, rather rotund, balding Soo Hojin who Hyunjae has spent weeks studying from afar. Someone who is in fact tall, broad-shouldered, with a full head of inky hair shaved into a daring undercut.

After years of doing this job, Hyunjae knows better than to act impulsively. His steps slow down even as his brain speeds up, whirring away at the number of possible scenarios he has found himself in, calculating the probability that this won’t end in (unnecessary) bloodshed. Hyunjae’s calm footsteps click dimly in the small, putrid alleyway, and the stranger, almost as if he were a feline of some sort, seems to twitch his head in the direction of the sound.

Quick as a flash, he whips around and Hyunjae is once again irritatingly startled by the sight before him. The man before him should perhaps more aptly be called a boy — Hyunjae’s typically accurate estimate puts him at around eighteen years of age, nineteen if he’s a late bloomer which Hyunjae suspects he’s not. His earlier mental comparison of the boy to a cat seems particularly fitting in this moment, as dark feline eyes regard him with a little too much intelligence for Hyunjae to feel safe. 

Then, to Hyunjae’s astonishment, the boy’s mouth twists into a pleased smile. Actually, 'pleased' isn’t quite right — it’s _ecstatic._

If there’s anything Hyunjae hates, it’s being surprised, and now, this idiotic adolescent has gone and surprised him thrice. 

He’s _infuriated._

The boy’s voice, husky and low, calls out to him in the dark, wet street. “Hey sunbaenim! Was wondering when you’d get here.” _He’s Korean_ , Hyunjae realises dimly.

Nothing in Hyunjae’s four years as a paid killer had prepared him for this. He just barely manages to hold in a gape, choosing instead to narrow his eyes shrewdly at the youngster before him.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” he asks in a carefully placid tone. 

The kid snorts and steps out so that he’s illuminated fully under a garish streetlamp. With the surgical brightness of the light upon him, the boy looks undeniably striking. His features are cast in stunning contrast, sharp vertexes and dark contours, and there’s something mystical about the way his eyes are set at such an angle away from his jutting cheekbones that Hyunjae can’t help but stare. 

“ _Sunbaenim._ ” The honorific comes out as a petulant whine almost. “Can we not play games? I know who you are. You know that I know who you are. And even though you don’t know who _I_ am yet, you will soon.”

The boy sidles up to Hyunjae with coiled muscles that shift and unfurl like those of a predatory cat. Instead of a bow, as is customary, the boy thrusts his hand out. Still reeling with meticulous escape routes, Hyunjae carefully takes the outstretched palm and shakes. 

There’s something wet on his hand.

He looks down, and there, glistening against his pale skin, is blood smeared like irreverent graffiti against his knuckles and palm. Hyunjae’s eyes are still judiciously impassive when they meet the youth’s. 

The boy giggles, a small delirious sound that slices through the air. 

“Oops.”

He snickers again, and, to his own utter irritation, Hyunjae notices how lovely the youngster’s eyes look as they slant into dark crescents, flashing with liveliness. 

“C’mon sunbaenim, don’t you wanna see what I did?” A large paw, bigger than his own, closes around Hyunjae’s wrist, the blood sticky where it drags across his delicate bones. The boy tugs impulsively, and Hyunjae lets himself be dragged deeper into the alley. 

Although his brain is sounding off alarm bells, a strange, detached part of him is too curious to let this go. Besides, Hyunjae reasons, if the kid tries anything, Hyunjae can sever a major artery in thirty seven different ways. He’s mentally running through method seventeen when he sees. 

He sees Soo Hojin, _his_ target, lifeless on the floor in front of him; the dead man’s body is drowning in a pool of blood so thick it looks like black tar. For a second, Hyunjae merely blinks at the corpulent carcass, barely processing what his brain is telling him - that this _boy_ stole his fucking kill from him - as he takes in the violence. And then—

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re playing at?” he hisses poisonously, rounding on the kid. The surge of blistering rage swells from anger at having his plans go awry, irritation at being caught off guard, and a primitive competitiveness that claws at his insides from being bested.

Instead of a cowed eighteen year old looking back at him, however, Hyunjae is met with the sight of eyes dancing with glee and white teeth that slip out to nibble happily on a plump bottom lip. 

“Isn’t it _swell_ , sunbaenim?” the boy asks, sickeningly mirthful. “You should’ve seen his face, _god._ People scream so nicely when they’re scared, don’t they?” He runs his pink tongue over the sharpness of his upper teeth, for all intents and purposes looking like a predator relishing a kill. “It was _sublime_.”

Quick as a flash, Hyunjae has a switchblade digging into the juncture of the adolescent’s throat, his other arm pinning him down. “Who the fuck do you think you are, kid?” Hyunjae bites out viciously. “You god damn _imbecile-_ ”

Laughter, feral and unrestrained bursts out into the thickness of the air. Flashing eyes fixed upon Hyunjae gleam with caustic pleasure, and to Hyunjae’s incredulity, the boy wiggles his jaw _downwards_ into the knife, drawing a thin trickle of blood from his golden skin.

It’s only then that Hyunjae realises the youth in his hold is some wild thing, untamed by the common laws of man.

“Stole your kill from you, sunbaenim,” the boy teases, nose scrunching up with childish pleasure. “S’okay, you can keep the money. I don’t want any of that. Just wanted you to notice me,” he drawls, but there’s a hopeful glint in his gaze now as he bites his lip. 

One of the kid’s wrists struggles against Hyunjae’s hold, and he instinctively tightens it. The youth huffs and rolls his eyes, pouting impishly. “So tense sunbae! I was just trying to point at m’self,” he whines. The change in honorific to an informal one grates at Hyunjae’s nerves, and he can’t help the upwards pull of his lip into a small snarl.

The boy rolls his eyes again and flaps his wrist ineffectually where it’s being pinned down. “Juyeon,” he says happily, trying to gesture to himself as best he can with a restrained arm. Then, suddenly, he surges forward - _in the back of Hyunjae’s mind, he vaguely registers the blade dragging a shallow cut along the skin of Juyeon’s jaw, slicing it open like a hot knife against butter_ \- and presses a _kiss_ to the corner of Hyunjae’s mouth.

“But you should call me Juyeonie, sunbae,” Juyeon murmurs wickedly against Hyunjae’s slack lips. Hyunjae had unconsciously loosened his grip on the boy out of shock - shock over the kiss and over the kid’s complete disregard for the blade running through his skin - and, without a care in the world, Juyeon slips out of Hyunjae’s hold. 

“See ya soon hyung!” he calls out behind him, red blood seeping out of the cut that runs from the column of his neck to the corner of his jaw. Hyunjae barely has time to register what had transpired before Juyeon seems to disappear into the night, slipping away like a ribbon of acrid smoke that burns and lingers in Hyunjae’s nostrils. He stands in that dark Singaporean alley with a dead man’s body cooling in the humid air for a long while, contemplating whether he had conjured up some sort of disturbed mirage or if he had indeed come face to face with something unthinkably savage for the first time.   
  


~~

  
Hyunjae is twenty when he first kills a man. 

He’s in Seoul, waiting tables at a shitty little cafe in the day and trying to study at night while he works as a bartender in a decrepit establishment at the edge of the city. He had come to the capital at eighteen, bright eyed and full of dreams, but the stench of the one-percent soon crushed him under their diamond heels. It takes Hyunjae three months to realise that though a train ticket into Seoul from Incheon costs only 9,500 won, the admissions fee to the golden gates that the rich and wealthy guard with others' lives costs blood, bone marrow and tears.

_(Thucydides had said, “The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must.”)_

It takes Hyunjae three months more to learn to hate Seoul with its lustrous veneer that hides the putrid filth seeping through its sewers — all the people who don’t have the money, the beauty or the brains to make it to the top of the ivory tower. Every night he goes to bed a little colder, a little hungrier than he did the day before, and to his humiliation, Hyunjae finds himself wasting away in this city that never sleeps.

It’s not until he turns twenty that his life turns around. A life for a life, after all.

He’s working the closing shift at the bar, and the pub’s patrons look even more rundown than the building itself that night. As he polishes a dirty glass with a greasy rag, Hyunjae finds himself so filled with hatred for this wretched city that his chest feels the way it does when he sneaks a couple gulps of the swill they serve and call vodka. He almost doesn’t notice the sound of the cracked bell tinkling, so loud is the pounding bass of resentment in his head.

Hyunjae looks up from the dirty bar to see the prettiest man who’s ever come within a hundred kilometres of this slum wander in like he owns the place. His lip curls with bitterness as he observes the way the man’s slender fingers are dripping with gold and the way the scent of expensive violet rolls off of him with every step.

He’s one of them - one of the lucky, rich bastards - and Hyunjae would give anything to beat him until money rains from his pockets like spring thunderstorms.

The man approaches the bar and quirks a perfectly manicured brow at Hyunjae. Hyunjae is expecting the name of some absurd drink to come spilling from between those petal pink lips, but instead—

“You’re awfully good-looking for this hovel.”

It’s a statement, flat and unadorned — not meant to be flattery. Shrewd eyes trail over him and Hyunjae has the unique sensation of being taken apart fibre by fibre under this stranger’s gaze. Even so, he can’t help the mutinous response that he grits out.

“Could say the same about you, ponce.” The last word - an insult - is muttered under his breath as he turns away, so Hyunjae doesn’t expect the rich, high laughter he hears from behind him.

“Indeed,” the pink-haired stranger murmurs, leaning delicately against the sticky wood of the bar. “That’s what I said but business is business.” There’s a brief pause, and even with his back to the man, Hyunjae can feel the stranger’s eyes on him, calculating and thoughtful. 

When he turns around once more, he’s met with a benign smile. “Vodka soda with one lime wedge if you have those. None of that shit vodka you bartenders take sips from either too, please,” the man says. Hyunjae snorts and reaches under the bar to grab the good vodka that they keep hidden from the types that frequent the bar. 

He pours it out without any of the finesse or care that bartenders in fancy, rooftop clubs have but the stranger seems satisfied nonetheless when he takes his first sip. 

“Tell me your name,” he commands after his first taste, and though he says it with the entitlement of every rich fuck Hyunjae has ever met, Hyunjae strangely finds that he doesn’t mind just this once.

“Lee Hyunjae,” he responds, cleaning another glass carelessly.

The pink-haired man nods pensively. “You’re not from here, Lee Hyunjae,” he says, at length, and Hyunjae nods. He watches the man’s dainty Adam’s apple bobs when he downs his drink, and then gapes a little when he pulls out a silk handkerchief to dab elegantly at the corner of his mouth.

Hyunjae whistles, “Shit, princess, you’re gonna get mugged if you’re pulling that kind of stuff out in a place like this.” He only gets a breathless chuckle in return, and then Hyunjae’s eyes are bugging out of his head, because the delicate sprite of a stranger is laying a shiny pistol atop the mottled wood of the bar.

“If that happens, feel free to use this to defend my honour,” the bastard says with no small amount of smugness. Hyunjae gawks at the gun, his fingers instinctively reaching out to trace the expensive engraving on the weapon’s grip. 

_Choi Chanhee._

“You got your gun monogrammed?” he huffs incredulously, and the man - Chanhee, he supposes - smiles genially. He’s about to respond when the sound of a gunshot is ringing through the bar and the wooden counter that Hyunjae is leaning against suddenly fractures into thousands of tiny pine shards.

He leaps back, sees Chanhee stumble in his periphery, but by the time his eyes focus, there are two enormous men storming into the pub. For a second, Hyunjae thinks deliriously _what a fucking plan to rob a shithole like this_ but then he realises that they have no interest in the till nor the other patrons who are scrambling out with shouts of terror. 

Instead, the thugs seem to only have eyes for one individual. Chanhee clearly catches on before Hyunjae does, because his pretty face immediately sets into a displeased expression, and, faster than Hyunjae can blink, he’s swinging his leg out in a roundhouse kick to catch one of the intruders square in the jaw.

It should concern him, Hyunjae thinks, that the sight of Chanhee’s heel cutting the man’s face open in so gruesome a way doesn’t faze him, but he barely has time to dwell on this thought because the other man is lunging for Chanhee. Just as the pink-haired man rams his heel onto the fallen thug’s face - the crunch of bones splintering sends a shiver down Hyunjae’s spine - the other man grabs him and puts him into a chokehold.

One second stretches into a limitless frame of time, and Hyunjae’s brain whirs as he calculates all the possible ways this confrontation might end. He eyes Chanhee in this frozen moment, trails his gaze over the perfectly fitted suit and the obtrusively gleaming double C’s of the Chanel brooch on his lapel, and his mouth twitches. There’s no use damning his soul by committing murder for a poor man after all.

Time seems to unfreeze then, and Hyunjae grabs Chanhee’s pistol laying on an unbroken fragment of the bar and levels it at the thug. The ogre of a man stills, his arm of corded muscle wrapped around Chanhee’s throat. Hyunjae watches a flicker of indecision, of fear, dart across the intruder’s face and realises that this man is no more than a lackey. 

For some reason, that thought makes it easier to consider pulling the trigger. 

“Kill him,” Chanhee orders breathlessly, and Hyunjae sees the thick arm squeeze tighter around pale skin. 

He considers the request for a moment, eyes still trained on the intruder who is watching him fearfully. “What do I get out of it?” he asks finally. 

A disbelieving, panicked huff of laughter escapes Chanhee and he rolls his eyes even as the thug’s arm around his neck tightens further.

“Whatever the fuck you want,” he chokes out crudely. “Just fucking kill him already!”

Hyunjae gazes unscrupulously at the pink-haired man for a moment before shrugging. “I’m going to hold you to that,” he mutters darkly. Then—

_Bang!_

Chanhee shoves a finger in his left ear and groans irritably, kicking the thug’s limp body with his heeled boot. “Ow,” he moans with the petulance of a child. “You couldn’t’ve shot him anywhere but the face? My ear fucking kills,” he gripes, levelling a glare at Hyunjae.

Hyunjae shrugs again, and then promptly vomits behind the bar. He didn’t think he had felt that bad pulling the trigger, but perhaps this is the last vestiges of a conscience working the burning in his throat.

When he’s upchucked all of his lunch and the three shots of vodka he had snuck in throughout his shift, he stands and moves to wipe his mouth with his shirt sleeve. A perfumed handkerchief is shoved under his nose, and Hyunjae takes it gratefully to wipe at his mouth; he’s about to give it back when Chanhee cuts him off with a disgusted, “Keep it. Please.”

Hyunjae snickers a little in spite of himself and pockets the silky fabric. It’s probably worth more than both his kidneys combined, but Chanhee behaves like Hyunjae would be doing _him_ a favour by taking it out of his sight. 

“So, whatever the fuck I want, huh?” Hyunjae says, swaying on the balls of his feet, a smug expression pulling at his mouth for the first time in years. Chanhee regards him carefully before a reluctant smile unfurls across his lovely features.

“Sure,” he says benevolently, leaning against the part of the bar that hasn’t been blown to splinters by gunfire. “Whatever the fuck you want.”

Hyunjae grins. “Take me with you. I want in on whatever shady shit you do that has you dressed like this,” he gestures at Chanhee’s Chanel blouse with its gilded collar. The pink-haired man bats Hyunjae’s hand away regally, the way a Siamese cat might do to a too-eager admirer, and then he smiles and tilts his head appraisingly.

“Even if, say, I killed people for a living and ran a network of international hitmen?” he asks, and Hyunjae immediately throws his hands in the air.

“Yeah princess, whatever to get me out of this shithole,” he exclaims. Chanhee watches him for a moment longer, then nods. 

“Alright,” he murmurs. One peaches-and-cream hand reaches out to tug at Hyunjae’s bicep. “Let me put my hand in your arm,” Chanhee demands. “I’m tired.”

Hyunjae snorts and crooks his elbow so Chanhee can slip his fingers around it. He lets himself be led out by the pink-haired man, his heart flip-flopping more out of excitement that he’s finally getting the fuck out of this hovel than out of revulsion that he’s just killed a man. As they walk out of the bar, Hyunjae snorts.

“You’re pretty shit at your job if you actually kill people for a living,” he derides, but Chanhee simply slaps his hand over Hyunjae’s forearm sharply in reprimand.

“Don’t be crass,” he says delicately. “There’s a whole world of murder beyond your vulgar guns, Hyunjae-ya.” Hyunjae doesn’t correct him for the nickname, even though he’s reasonably certain he’s the older of the two. As he’s brought to Chanhee’s Rolls Royce reclining elegantly against the cracked pavement of Seoul’s most dilapidated neighbourhood, Hyunjae takes a last look around. 

_Goodbye, you fuckers_ , he thinks with savage pleasure. The car smells like Italian leather and French champagne, but these are things that Hyunjae has yet to learn to identify. For now, it’s enough that they smell better than anything he’s ever smelled before, that Chanhee has promised he’ll learn their names - Moët and Chandon and Il Bisonte - in due course.

That day, Hyunjae pays for his ticket to enter the Eden behind golden gates with blood after all. Perhaps it should alarm him how little he cares that the blood is not his own, but morality is a poor man’s currency that Hyunjae has no need for now.   
  


~~

  
One of the first things Hyunjae notices about Juyeon is that the boy is always laughing. They’re in St. Petersburg now, the crispness of autumn giving way to the cold bite of Russian winds. St. Petersburg gleams with all its trappings of wealth and luxury, but Hyunjae finds that Juyeon shines the brightest amidst the ballroom filled with the rich and powerful.

Ever since he met Juyeon a few months ago - eighty seven days to be precise - the boy hasn't left his mind. A cacophony of questions echoes around in Hyunjae’s skull every time he thinks about their encounter —how did Juyeon find him? What is an eighteen year old doing committing murder? Where the fuck are his parents?

Hyunjae had even tried looking him up in Chanhee’s database to no avail. He hadn’t told the ringleader of their little band of international assassins about the boy, had simply disposed of the Singaporean man’s body the way he had originally planned to and collected his commission. Still, when search after search came up empty, vexation scratched at his interior lobe like nails on a chalkboard.

Almost three months later, Hyunjae had half-convinced himself it was a figment of his imagination, that perhaps it was something his usually-quiet guilty conscience had conjured up to scare him a little. But when he’s alone at night in whatever hotel room he is occupying that day, Hyunjae can still feel the treacly feeling of blood against his hand where Juyeon had shaken it, can still feel the brush of slightly chapped lips on the corner of his mouth. 

He had imagined nothing.

Even so, this ballroom of people with affection of fool’s gold for one another is the last place Hyunjae would’ve expected to see Juyeon again. It’s his third - or is it fourth? - assignment since the Singaporean smoker who had cheated someone out of one too many bills, and Hyunjae had begun to believe that he’d never see Juyeon again for all that Juyeon had called out a “see you soon, hyung”. 

In the end, Hyunjae hears Juyeon before he sees him, the smoky laughter that sounds eerily familiar tugging at a string of memory curled in his skull. It takes Hyunjae’s hippocampus a moment to sort through the carefully categorised sounds he files away every day, but when it finally locates the soundbite, a little dusty but still as clear as ever, Hyunjae’s head whips around to find the source. 

And there he is, conversing with a gaggle of people each more beautiful than the last, but Juyeon is undeniably, unspeakably more beautiful than them all. In his initial shock, Hyunjae can only process the way Juyeon’s tuxedo tightens with every shift of his broad shoulders and the way his endless legs look encased in perfectly crisp black. As his eyes trail over the swathes of coppery-gold skin shining under the chandelier, a hand at his elbow suddenly jolts him out of his trance.

“Hyung,” Sunwoo murmurs, deceptively light. “Why are you standing there like an ass with half a brain?” Hyunjae’s right eye twitches with annoyance, but he doesn’t turn to look at the shorter, red-headed man. Instead, he keeps his gaze nonchalant as it sweeps across the room, and his mouth barely moves when he responds.

“Piss off, Sunwoo-ya.”

He can hear the ghost of a smirk tugging at his companion’s full lips, and Sunwoo whispers back, “I see Vasiliev. Time to go milk him for all his assets.” The heat of a body next to his dissipates when Sunwoo moves away, and Hyunjae watches him approach his target - a gaunt, skeletally thin man - out of the corner of his eye. He momentarily pauses to admire the way Sunwoo, who came from nothing in the middle of a rural town in South Korea, is here stealing enough money from a Russian stranger to fund their entire network for a year. It takes Hyunjae a second to feel the weight of a gaze on him.

His eyes snap forward, searching for the perpetrator when he realises—

Juyeon is watching him, dark irises twinkling impossibly bright. He’s sipping at a narrow flute of champagne, and Hyunjae stares, mesmerised by the way Juyeon’s Adam’s apple moves against his throat. A foreign, unfamiliar sensation burns at his cheeks, and Hyunjae is about to look away pointedly, even as his mind tries to figure out what the boy is doing in Russia, when he notices exactly who Juyeon is talking to.

One of the young men in Juyeon’s little huddle turns, and his side profile is one that Hyunjae has spent the last three weeks staring at in countless of pictures and illicitly hacked security cameras. Suddenly, precisely what Juyeon is planning on doing dawns on him, and it feels like a maelstrom of vicious fury is dragging Hyunjae down into its torrential waters.

A growl threatens to tear out of Hyunjae’s throat, and the onslaught of rage is so quick, so ruthless that his vision clouds for a second. The primal part of his brain lashes _not fucking again._ As if sensing his wrath, Juyeon’s mouth unfurls into a sharp grin, and he raises his glass rakishly in salute. His companion, Aleksei Baryshnikov - Hyunjae’s fucking _target_ \- notices, and looks curiously over to where Hyunjae is standing. Hyunjae grits his jaw furiously tight, his hands turning white with how hard he’s gripping his own flute of champagne as he raises it in a toast back.

The wink he gets over the rim of crystal is nothing short of brazen, and Hyunjae wants to _tear_ his fingernails through Juyeon’s burnished skin. 

Baryshnikov leans in to whisper something in Juyeon’s ear, still looking at Hyunjae with an unassuming yet intrigued expression, and Hyunjae watches in mute fury as Juyeon whispers something back, his lovely mouth forming rapidly around velveteen Russian syllables. Then he laughs, and Hyunjae can almost hear the sound of it, husky and reckless, travelling across the gilded room.

Baryshnikov’s eyes light up in affection at the sight.

Before Hyunjae can interject, can step in to prevent this _child_ from stealing another one of his targets from him, an ill-timed waiter steps up to him. By the time the Russian words for “no need” fall from his tongue, Hyunjae is startled to see that Juyeon is gone, as is his target.

He really does snarl then, appearances be damned, and the sharp noise of his dress shoes clacking against glossy marble punctuates every stride Hyunjae takes out into the grand foyer. Hyunjae sees a flash of black silk disappear behind an enormous, stately pillar, and hears the sound of whispered laughter too intimate to exchange between just friends. 

His steps quieten as he draws near, each of his muscles ready to spring. Something murmured in Baryshnikov’s cultured baritone, and then a dulcet reply. Hyunjae approaches Juyeon and his target from the side, careful to stay in the shadows cast by the numerous sculptural fixtures in the room. Perhaps it was still an exercise in pointlessness, because a moment later, from across the foyer, Juyeon’s eyes meet his. 

Baryshnikov’s face is buried into the slender column of Juyeon’s neck, and Juyeon groans softly, the sweet sound echoing just the slightest bit in the marbled chamber. Hyunjae watches, entranced, as Juyeon entangles large hands into blonde hair, but for all of his honeyed moans, Juyeon’s eyes are sharp and calculating as they bore into Hyunjae’s. 

Languidly, he winks, and runs his tongue wetly across the rosiness of his lips. Then, before Hyunjae can say or do anything, Juyeon whips a gleaming blade out and stabs through the major arteries in Baryshnikov’s throat. 

The poor, hapless creature doesn’t even have the time to be surprised before blood comes gushing out of the incision, and Hyunjae stares, open-mouthed, rage simmering dangerously near the surface as Juyeon coos and flips to press the blonde man’s limp body against the pillar. With his eyes still trained on Hyunjae, Juyeon leans into his victim, and tenderly, as a lover might, the boy presses his lips against Baryshnikov’s haemorrhaging throat, kissing the elegant expanse of skin that is drowning in red.

Baryshnikov gurgles, eyes wide with alarm and terror when Juyeon draws back to regard him gleefully. Juyeon’s mouth and chin are smeared with blood, and he covers the scream bubbling out of the Russian’s chest with a bruising kiss, snickering with frenzied mirth the entire time as he streaks blood over those paling lips.

Finally, Hyunjae sees the light die out of his target’s eyes, sees the panicked mouth lose its tautness as life escapes the hollow frame of a body. Juyeon leans back, taking one last longing look at the man’s handsome features before dropping his hands from Baryshnikov’s lapels to let the body fall, crumpled, to the floor.

In a heartbeat, Hyunjae is there, shoving Juyeon brutally against the pillar. Juyeon’s smile burns bright and sparkling underneath crimson, and he giggles even as Hyunjae digs an arm into his throat. 

“Sunbae! Wasn’t that fun?” he goads in Korean, eyes gleaming manically. 

“ _Shut your fucking mouth_ ,” Hyunjae snaps dangerously. He pants, adrenaline pumping through his veins until he feels dizzy with sensation, and Juyeon nods mock-dutifully even though his eyebrow quirks with amusement.

It takes less than a minute for Hyunjae to gather his wits about him — enough time to calculate how much longer they have until someone will probably walk in, enough time to figure out where to dispose of the body. It’s just not quite enough time to figure out what to do with Juyeon, however.

Kill him? It’s certainly tempting to drive his knife between Juyeon’s seventh and eighth ribs to puncture his lung until the youth drowns in his own blood; after all, he is at best, a dangerous nuisance and at worst, a maniacal sadist hellbent on taking Hyunjae’s job from him. Hyunjae didn’t get as far as he has in this profession by dithering over moral quagmires — there’s no real reason _not_ to kill Juyeon. 

When he meets the boy’s gaze, however, he finds it dancing with challenge, unhinged and anticipatory, and _god_ , Hyunjae realises that the truth is he’s never seen anything prettier than Juyeon right now, blood-stained mouth and obsidian eyes that hold a galaxy of madness. Hyunjae flirts briefly with the idea of letting him go then, but there’s no telling what sort of Biblical bedlam Juyeon would wreak on his life if left alive.

As he contemplates this, Hyunjae’s hand drifts of its own volition up to Juyeon’s face. Almost subconsciously, he thumbs at the blood coating the youth’s skin, and, for a second, Juyeon looks younger, almost vulnerable under Hyunjae’s gaze. Hyunjae’s eyes flicker down to that shapely mouth, and he feels Juyeon’s breath hitch minutely under the arm at the boy’s throat.

He finds himself leaning in just the tiniest of fractions, when—

Footsteps. A familiar gait. Hyunjae leaps apart from Juyeon upon hearing the sound of Sunwoo’s quick walk down the length of the foyer. 

“Get away,” he whispers frantically, and Juyeon leers suggestively at him, as if to say _I could stay right here and ruin your entire life, sunbaenim._

To Hyunjae’s relief, however, Juyeon leans in, so close that Hyunjae can smell sandalwood mixed with the metallic edge of Baryshnikov’s blood on his skin, and runs his tongue wickedly along the shell of Hyunjae’s ear.

“ _До встречи, хён_ ,” comes the lazy whisper, dancing at the end of silent laughter. 

_(See you soon, hyung.)_

By the time Sunwoo rounds the corner of the pillar, Juyeon has flitted off. The red-headed assassin starts in surprise at the sight of Baryshnikov’s body in a veritable pool of crimson, and his gaze darts up to Hyunjae’s. Hyunjae holds his breath and wonders if Sunwoo can somehow smell deceit that mixes with the stench of death in the air.

Instead, Sunwoo says mildly, “Not like you to be so messy, hyung.” Hyunjae breathes a silent sigh of relief and shrugs, leaning over to inspect the corpse. Sunwoo’s right — this will be a bitch to clean up.

“You’ve got a bit of blood on your ear, by the way.”  
  


~~

  
Hyunjae is twenty when he meets Chanhee. The pink-haired man waltzes into Hyunjae’s life with the grace of a water-nymph, and Hyunjae follows him because there’s nothing more satisfying than the feeling of freshly printed bills running against his fingertips.

Chanhee shows him a new world — the Seoul Hyunjae had always dreamed of seeing. They dance, the two of them, across the city, leaving behind burning wreckages and streets that fill with blood while their pockets grow heavy with gold. 

There might have been a time when Hyunjae briefly wondered at his life’s choices, when he wondered if what he was doing was wrong, but it doesn’t take more than a couple of luxury watches and the reminder that the world would chew him up and spit it out if he let it for avarice to win out. 

Chanhee promises Hyunjae that if he listens carefully to everything the pretty man says, his pockets will never feel light again, and so Hyunjae gives himself willingly to Chanhee’s tutelage. The pink-haired man teaches him how to throw a blade and how to reload a gun magazine with just one hand and his hipbone. He teaches him how to pleasure a body with his tongue alone, and enough languages for Hyunjae to talk, fuck and kill with ease around the world.

Hyunjae lives and breathes in Chanhee’s imitation, and between learning how to hold a fork and knife and how to kill a man with just a set of house-keys, he fucks Chanhee in Chanhee’s way too.

It’s not love, and it’s rarely even like. It’s circumstance, simple and crude, but Chanhee has given Hyunjae everything he could possibly want.  
  


~~

  
They’re sent to Monte Carlo, and Hyunjae is shoved onto a flight with Sunwoo to finish a two-hit job. Even though he inevitably ends up with others in the same city at the same time, Hyunjae hasn’t worked with someone else on a job since his early days in the business, and he’s apprehensive about it to say the least. Still, on the plane ride from Seoul to Monaco, Sunwoo doesn’t try to steal his complimentary dessert and only bothers him once to borrow a phone charger, so things are going better than Hyunjae might have expected.

It’s not until after they land that trouble begins, and really Hyunjae should’ve probably learned to expect it by now.

The night is stiflingly hot, and his dress shirt clings in the most uncomfortable way to his frame. Something about the stickiness of the night reminds him eerily of Singapore, and perhaps that should have been the first foreboding sign because when he and Sunwoo emerge upon their targets, the two of them dressed innocuously for Monte Carlo but audaciously for anywhere else in the world, Juyeon is standing there with a gun pressed to one of their targets’ trembling temple.

For a second, Juyeon looks as he always does to see Hyunjae, manic delight casting his face in splendour amidst the locomotive oranges of Monaco’s sundown. Then he notices that Hyunjae is not alone, and the shift in his features is _terrifying_.

Glee gives way to incandescent fury, and Hyunjae sees the tempest rolling across the boy’s brow as Juyeon pulls his lips back into a snarl. The gun in his hand quivers, and then it’s suddenly being pointed directly at Hyunjae. 

Sunwoo hisses with surprise, the barrel of his own revolver clicking as he cocks it. Perhaps to his companion’s consternation, Hyunjae doesn’t lift his own weapon, simply holds his two elegant hands up in the air in the most placating manner. 

“Juyeon,” he calls, but he’s interrupted by the boy’s caustically bitten response.

“Who the _fuck_ is that, sunbaenim?” Juyeon spits between gritted teeth. There’s wild, untameable hurt in his eyes that make his eighteen year old - perhaps nineteen now, given that it’s been ten months since they first met in Singapore - face look feral under Monte Carlo’s cherry reds.

Gently, as one does when approaching a savage animal, Hyunjae pads softly toward the boy, ignoring Sunwoo’s frantically whispered orders to _stay the fuck put._ Hyunjae walks closer and closer until the cool metal of Juyeon’s gun is pressed against his forehead, a chilled circle against his frontal bone. He vaguely registers the two men hog-tied by Juyeon’s foot struggling against their restraints, but he pays them no mind.

“Juyeonie,” Hyunjae says softly, and the turmoil in Juyeon’s eyes stills a fraction at the nickname. “Tell hyung what’s wrong.”

Juyeon’s mouth twists once more to bare his teeth, and his hand doesn’t remove the gun from Hyunjae’s forehead. “I followed you all the way to Europe, sunbaenim, and I was careful to save this one for you so we could do it together even though I was so _tempted_ to kill them just now, but you went and brought someone _else_ along?” he hisses, savagely angry. 

Sunwoo’s voice cracks through the air then, full of brusque warning. 

“Drop the gun, kid,” he snaps. “I can put a bullet between your eyes before you even blink.” 

Juyeon’s gaze flickers to the red-headed man, and suddenly, he looks the way Hyunjae remembers him always looking — heedlessly entertained with the slightest hint of derangement. His expression changes so quickly that Hyunjae almost forgets what it looked like barely a second ago, can barely remember what anything but mirth looks like on the youth’s face. Juyeon snickers, nose scrunched so sickeningly cute that Hyunjae almost forgets that there’s a cold muzzle pressed to his head.

“ _Actually_ ,” Juyeon drawls, “Your bullets - I assume you’re using .220 Swift bullets because why wouldn’t you - travel at a speed of 1200 meters per second, but the average human being takes one tenth of a second to blink. Given that you’re just a little over 150 meters away and haven’t accounted for the fact that the bullet has yet to leave the cylinder nor the fact that I am _not_ an average human being, I’d say your calculations are a little off, mon ami.”

Hyunjae would laugh hysterically at the situation if he wasn’t worried about losing his life then and there. He can almost hear the sound of Sunwoo’s teeth gnashing in the stillness of the night, and, unsurprisingly, his companion’s raspy voice cuts back.

“ _Shut the fuck up_ ,” Sunwoo seethes. “Lower your fuckin’ gun, kid.”

Juyeon just giggles turbulently once more, and then Hyunjae hears a sound that chills him to his core.

_Click._ The cocking of Juyeon’s gun against his brow. 

Juyeon looks back at Hyunjae, eyes glittering beneath the now-mulberry sky and, if possible, they light up even more with a sort of crazed exhilaration. His pink tongue peeks out and laps at a plump bottom lip while his gaze darts frenziedly all over Hyunjae’s face, practically drinking the sight in.

“Sunbaenim,” he breathes giddily. “You look so _pretty_ when you’re scared.” Juyeon’s eyes are a hurricane of thrill and hysterical gaiety, and for a moment, Hyunjae thinks the boy looks far more like a beast than man with the way he seems to _taste_ Hyunjae’s fear in the air. 

“Juyeonie,” Hyunjae entreats softly, and Juyeon’s eyes snap back to his from where they had been flickering feverishly across Hyunjae’s face. “Put the gun down please.” There’s a prickle on the back of his neck, his body waking up to the realisation that he’s knocking on death’s door, and a small trickle of sweat meanders down his temple. 

The muzzle of the gun twists against his forehead as Juyeon rotates his wrist, holding the gun parallel to the ground while he leans in. “Why should I, sunbaenim? What do I get out of it?” he taunts, and his hot breath fans over Hyunjae’s face. Suddenly, a wet tongue, kittenish and light, touches his cheek and trails upwards. 

Juyeon rumbles low in his chest as he licks at the trickle of Hyunjae’s sweat and then he chuckles, leaning away to regard Hyunjae with wild, ecstatic eyes. 

_Recent studies have shown that humans can - quite literally - smell fear; scientists have noted that certain pheromones released into perspiration and sweat during episodes of terror can be detected by our olfactory senses._

Hyunjae takes an unsteady breath, hyperaware of the fact that Juyeon is a hair-trigger away from blowing his brains out all over the lovely flagstones. Four years as a for-hire killer have wrangled his fight-or-flight instincts into obedience, however, and Hyunjae’s heart stills as calm takes over. There’s only one thing Juyeon could possibly want after all. 

“You and hyung can kill them together Juyeonie,” he murmurs, inclining his head towards the two men still hog-tied on the ground. With the attention back on them, the two targets suddenly start bleating with fear all over again as they try to scramble away. One almost succeeds, rolling onto his front in an effort to crawl, but Juyeon simply laughs and stomps down hard on the man’s hand. 

The sound of bones crunching is no longer unfamiliar to Hyunjae, but the flare of laughter that accompanies it is wholly new to him. He glances sharply at Juyeon who looks positively delighted at the pained squeal he elicits from his victim, but then the boy suddenly snaps coldly, “Don’t.”

Hyunjae isn’t sure who he’s talking to until Juyeon looks up and peers around Hyunjae to level a scathing glare at Sunwoo. “I saw that. Don’t try and get closer because you think I’m distracted,” he hisses. Juyeon’s gaze turns back to Hyunjae and he seems to mull something over before a bright expression blooms across his face.

Hyunjae is once again struck by the sheer radiance of Juyeon’s youth, even with his life hanging on by a thread as it is.

With his eyes still on Sunwoo, Juyeon says happily, “Here’s an idea — you fuck off to wherever you came from and leave me and Hyunjae sunbaenim to finish the job.”

A derisive snort and Sunwoo’s vicious rasp — “Don’t be a fucking idiot. I’ll kill you before-”

“Sunwoo-ya.” Hyunjae’s own voice sounds too loud in the quiet courtyard. “Go back. I’ll meet you after.”

He hears Sunwoo bristle angrily, and the younger man retorts, “You’re _kidding_ right? We can fucking take this tween wannabe if you just-”

“Sunwoo.” His tone broaches no argument. “Fall back.” 

There’s a chain of command, loose as it is, in their organisation, and though Hyunjae can hear Sunwoo warring with himself, a growl of displeasure rips through the air as Sunwoo complies. Hyunjae watches Juyeon’s eyes glow with pleasure, hears the sound of footsteps retreating and he exhales slowly. It’s silent now, save for the muffled whimpering of the two men bound at their feet.

Juyeon slowly lowers the gun from Hyunjae’s forehead, watching him with the intensity of an animal cornering a kill but still as gleeful as ever. Then he seems to get distracted because the most childish pout puckers at his red mouth, and one large hand comes up to stroke gently at Hyunjae’s forehead.

“Aw, I bruised your pretty skin sunbaenim!” he cries, dismayed. Juyeon shuffles up close to inspect it with large eyes. “You should’a told me I was pressing too hard!” 

Juyeon’s emotions change so quickly that Hyunjae feels like he has whiplash. With a dry throat, he waves the boy off, turning his attention instead to the two tied-up men at hand. He’s staring at them struggle, contemplating what his next move should be when he feels Juyeon move into place behind him, and the boy hooks his chin over Hyunjae’s shoulder. 

Hyunjae wonders if the synapses in his brain are fucked up from the sheer amount of adrenaline coursing through his body, because for a second, he feels a wave of overwhelming tenderness for Juyeon and his easy affection, but that would be fucking _insane_ because the youth in question is almost certainly insane himself. As it is, Hyunjae doesn’t say anything, just lets Juyeon drape himself casually over Hyunjae’s frame like a languid cat.

“Wanna do the first one, sunbaenim,” Juyeon’s voice curls around Hyunjae’s ear like delicate wisps of smoke. Hyunjae nods, his throat suddenly dry for a reason entirely different than before — Juyeon’s lean frame is pressed startlingly close to his, and the way his breath ghosts against the shell of Hyunjae’s ear sends a shiver of something _hotter_ than fear down his spine.

“You can do the other one,” Juyeon says, already unfurling from around Hyunjae to stalk forwards. He crouches down beside one of the men, a silver knife appearing in his hands in a flash, and he runs the tip of it gently down the target’s face. The Frenchman, whose thread will be cut today because of the wrong type of insult to an American oil tycoon, shudders and drools around his cloth gag as his eyes roll around to stare frantically at the knife. 

Juyeon just chuckles, toying with his prey, and it strikes Hyunjae just how much of a game this all is to the boy. The knife suddenly stops short at the Frenchman’s throat, and Juyeon eyes it hungrily.

“I know Interpol is looking for you, Monsieur,” he murmurs teasingly in French. “Perhaps if you scream loud enough, they might hear you.” 

The target begins to shriek - loud guttural cries that rattle through Hyunjae’s bones - and he’s torn between wanting to shoot the man dead so that it’ll stop and derision at how easily he fell for Juyeon's bait. The youth laughs delightedly as he watches the man shout himself hoarse, and then he suddenly slams the knife into the right side of the victim’s throat. Blood gushes out, far messier than Hyunjae likes to do things, but Juyeon seems to _revel_ in the crimson that stains his golden skin.

He lifts his hand to bathe it in the waterfall of red the way believers receive holy water and Hyunjae is painfully struck by how beautiful Juyeon is all over again — young, vibrating and deliriously mad.

The man dies not long after, and Juyeon draws his finger through the puddle of blood once more before standing up straight. Hyunjae sighs and shakes himself from the heady haze he had sunken into watching Juyeon kill. He draws his gun and points it at the second man’s head, cocking it detachedly. Hyunjae is about to pull the trigger when a bloody hand catches his wrist.

“Guns are so _boring_ sunbaenim,” Juyeon whines, and it occurs to Hyunjae how utterly ludicrous it is that the killer in front of him is on the brink of stomping his foot in a temper tantrum. “Show me how you kill with a knife,” he demands. 

For some unspeakable reason, Hyunjae is helpless to say no. He offers the youth the slightest tired smile, and Juyeon just _beams_ as he watches Hyunjae unsheathe the carbon pocket knife he keeps holstered to his ankle. Hyunjae does startle a little, though, when Juyeon holds out one blood-soaked hand when he stands back up.

“What?” he asks, baffled. Juyeon jerks his hand again. 

“I wanna hold it,” he clamours and Hyunjae has to fight back the furrow in his brows. Instead, he just holds the knife out limply to Juyeon who takes it with relish, twirling it in his large, veiny hands dextrously. The youth leans down to take the cloth gag out of the second man’s mouth and drags his bloody thumb all over the target’s dry lips.

“Will you scream for me too?” Juyeon goads prettily in English, but the man - an Italian associate of the Frenchman - simply shakes his head. 

Hyunjae has to admire his fortitude in the face of Juyeon’s suddenly savagely angry face.

“ _Scream for me_ ,” he demands, pushing the knife dangerously against the man’s jaw - just far away enough from any major arteries to injure without killing. The man sets his mouth in a grim line and shakes his head once more, and then begins to mutter a prayer over and over again in Italian.

_The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom._  
_The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom.  
The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and bring me safely into his heavenly kingdom._

_2 Timothy 4:18_ , Hyunjae notes dimly, but Juyeon begins to laugh, high and manic, into the air as he drags Hyunjae’s knife down the man’s cheek, eliciting a grunt of pain from Signor Albizzi.

“Your God has left you,” the boy derides - _he speaks Italian too,_ Hyunjae realises - with a feral look in his eyes. “It’s only you and me and my God now.” 

Suddenly, Juyeon is slicing the blade through the target’s mouth up into his cheeks, tearing it into a sick parody of a smile as the man’s wracked screams pierce the air. Hyunjae lurches forward to grab the boy by the elbow, and, broken out of his trance, Juyeon whips around with a vicious look in his eyes. It's only when the dark irises focus on Hyunjae’s careful expression that the inferno dies, and he smiles.

“Go on sunbaenim, show me how you do it,” Juyeon prompts placidly, grabbing Hyunjae so that Hyunjae’s pale hand is resting atop his sun-kissed one on the knife. Even with his target curled on the ground with blood pouring from his face like nectar from overripe fruit, the shocking intimacy of having his front pressed up against Juyeon’s shoulderblades while the youth’s backside nestles tightly against the V of Hyunjae’s hips sends a jolt through Hyunjae.

He swallows. Never in his four years of killing as he felt anything but mild revulsion and occasionally satisfaction at a job well done. Never has he felt the curious tendrils of arousal curling through him now, amplified by the way Juyeon’s body coils like a sensuous feline underneath his.

“Show me,” Juyeon repeats again, and Hyunjae looks up to see that the boy’s eyes are hooded, darker with something potent and exhilarating. Hyunjae’s throat constricts, and he nods wordlessly. With a shaky heart but certain hands, Hyunjae directs their joined grip to the target’s lungs. His free hand reaches around Juyeon to splay against the Italian’s ribcage, caging him into Hyunjae’s space, and he feels the boy quiver minutely. 

“If you drive the knife here,” he indicates quietly, “your victim will drown in his own blood. It’s faster, quicker for cleanup-”

“What if I like it messy?” Juyeon hedges huskily. Hyunjae pauses and glances at the boy in his arms out of the side of his eyes. Juyeon’s cheekbones look particularly sharp at this angle, the shadowy contours of his face highlighted by the jutting apexes of his undercut. There’s something beguiling about the way Juyeon’s eyes blink languorously at him, and Hyunjae feels warmth entirely unrelated to the heat of summer in Monaco break across his skin.

It’s irrational, this bizarre and absurd attraction to a boy almost six years his junior who Hyunjae strongly suspects has medically-diagnosable psychopathic tendencies. Hyunjae, who has spent his whole life living in a rational way to the most extreme extents - after all, he began _killing_ simply to obtain the lifestyle he had always dreamed of - finds himself utterly disarmed by a senseless burning fibre of heat and want that seems to simmer dangerously close to the surface every time he comes into contact with Juyeon. 

Maybe it’s this irrational urge that unglues his tongue from the roof of his mouth and prompts him to respond airily, “You _would_ like it messy.” Juyeon’s eyes widen momentarily, perhaps as surprised as Hyunjae is himself by the flirtatious response, but then his nose twitches as he bares his white canines in pleasure.

Hyunjae clicks his tongue, drawing Juyeon’s attention back to the task at hand. “Right here,” Hyunjae says, pointing to the writhing man’s ribs and he sees Juyeon’s tongue dart out to wet his lips in his peripheral vision. “You can do it if you want.”

Juyeon leans his chin on Hyunjae’s shoulder, an act that is shockingly intimate for what they’re doing, for the man still bleeding out from his butchered mouth, but Juyeon’s hand is firm as he thrusts the carbon blade into the target’s ribs. A wail of a cry tears through the air, but as blood fills the man’s lungs, the sound is cut off with a pathetic gurgle. 

Juyeon reaches around Hyunjae to drag the target up by the nape of his neck, and Hyunjae almost stumbles back in alarm when Juyeon presses his nose up against the Italian man’s rapidly paling cheek. Juyeon inhales, and laughs a low, dark chuckle.

“Where is your God now, Signor Albizzi?” Juyeon taunts, relishing in the fear that seems to emanate off of the dying man in pungent waves. It’s not until the victim’s eyes finally roll back into his head that Juyeon lets go of him, allowing the body to fall to the floor like a discarded toy. 

Hyunjae watches the boy with apprehension, and fear mixes with intoxicating desire at the way Juyeon looks cast under moonlight with his wild eyes and blood-soaked skin. Juyeon stalks forward to where Hyunjae is still kneeling on the ground and looms over him with a smouldering want that burns so very visibly against the indigo sky. 

Slowly, he crouches until the two of them are eye-level. Hyunjae stares, his chest impossibly constricted, at the way Juyeon’s eyes flicker down to Hyunjae’s lips. Hyunjae has spent a lifetime studying people to get what he wants from them, and instinctively, he knows what’s about to happen. There’s the briefest of moments when Juyeon seems to lean in and pause, as if he’s waiting for Hyunjae to push him away, but when the older man doesn’t, Juyeon presses his mouth firmly against Hyunjae’s.

There are no fireworks, no symphony of sound that bursts when their lips meet. There’s only the feeling of Juyeon’s spit-slicked lips on Hyunjae’s, the feeling of his hot tongue - a little unsure, but curious all the same - lapping across Hyunjae’s mouth and the almost painful grip that Juyeon suddenly has on Hyunjae’s neck. Hyunjae kisses him back feverishly, letting himself forget for a moment that the boy in his arms is bathed in blood, instead getting lost in the pounding rhythm of his heart against his chest and the scent of iron that fills his nostrils.

It’s only when his pale hands reach up to tug sharply at the short hairs on the nape of Juyeon’s neck, eliciting a sharp, needy whine from the boy, that Hyunjae suddenly remembers where and who he is. 

He stumbles back, gaping with unadulterated horror at Juyeon’s tousled black hair and dilated pupils, and the youth looks- looks _hurt_ for some godforsaken reason.

“We can’t be doing this,” Hyunjae snaps as panic turns into anger. “You- you’re a fucking kid who doesn’t know what he’s doing and- _god_ where the fuck are your parents? Why are you here?” He rambles agitatedly and Juyeon watches him with an expression that grows increasingly furious. 

“What do you mean sunbaenim?” Juyeon asks with tightly controlled anger.

“I mean- I mean you call me _sunbaenim_ for fuck’s sake. You’re just some kid playing games when you- you should go the fuck home Juyeon. This is fucking ridiculous,” Hyunjae barks. “Don’t let me see you poking around again, you have your whole fucking life in front of you and you’re just- _god_ just get the hell home. You're just a fucking child.”

When Juyeon doesn’t move, Hyunjae gets up to shove him back. “Get. Away,” he hisses poisonously, and there’s a flash of hurt - of embarrassment - under the incensed obsidian irises glaring back at him, but Juyeon simply curls his lips up into a snarl before retreating. 

Hyunjae watches him back away as his chest heaves with laboured breaths, and he doesn’t turn away until Juyeon has disappeared into the shadows. He remains there for a time, a Dionysus standing amidst pools of blood as red as merlot, in Monte Carlo where two lives were discarded like useless poker chips while the rich revelled on in their golden chateaus. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As always, your comments and kudos mean the world to me.
> 
> I unfortunately haven't finished writing this fic yet so I'm unable to say when I'll update. You can subscribe to me or this fic individually if you'd like an email every time I post a new chapter (I will also be tweeting chapter releases). 
> 
> If you want to chat or get updates on my work, come find me on Twitter (link in profile)!
> 
> \- Anon


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